


let's do some living (after we die)

by damnslippyplanet



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Also Eating People, Because This Is Our Fandom, Bedelia Lives Fight Me, Bedelia's Lucky Day, Cooking Fluff, Everywhere Is Fluff, Hannibal's Lucky Day, Love fluff, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Will Graham Has A Nice But Weird Day, murder fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 05:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5815219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is still so new, Will doesn’t understand how it also feels so comfortable.  Dangerous and comfortable, familiar and shocking, wanton and tender, he doesn’t understand how Hannibal can be so many things at once.  Can make <i>Will</i> be so many things at once. He doesn’t understand how it takes this little to draw such a soft, wanting sigh from his lips while he’s standing in Bedelia Du Maurier’s kitchen waiting to eat her leg – <i>her fucking leg</i> – for dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let's do some living (after we die)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Немного жизни (после смерти)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6829363) by [Setchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setchi/pseuds/Setchi)



> This particular prompt ("How do you think they would bring up the “love” subject?") got away from me and got long enough to be its own fic instead of dropped into the prompt compilation. Sorry and/or you're welcome, prompting anon?

Will’s exhausted and he’s tempted to stop stirring the sauce and go sit down with a glass of wine.  Better yet, he’d like to open a window and stick his head out into the cold night air and indulge in a brief moment of _what exactly am I doing here?_

The air of the kitchen is hot and thick from Hannibal’s cooking, and he’s bone-weary from playing surgical assistant, so how Hannibal is still standing after doing the real work of removing Bedelia’s leg and keeping her alive, god only knows. He’s pretty sure Hannibal’s running on some sort of evil _joie de vivre_ – is _joie de morte_ a thing? – and while it’s mesmerizing to watch, Will can’t seem to siphon any of it off for himself.  

But he’s not going to be the one to ruin Hannibal’s big dinner, so he keeps stirring and stares into the pot and wonders exactly what part of Bedelia it’s intended for.  He feels like that thought ought to bother him more than it does. But it smells delicious and he’s too tired to think and he’s aching and bruised in ways that make him shiver and flush to think about and it’s easier to stir than to come up with what the alternative course of action might be.

He hears a murmur of conversation from the dining room - Bedelia must be coming around.  She’d been too out of it for conversation when he’d been in there a few minutes earlier, helping Hannibal carry out the heavy platter. Will was fine with that.  He’s not interested in further conversations with Bedelia.

He determinedly does not listen.  He keeps stirring, and shortly thereafter he’s rewarded by Hannibal’s arms slipping around his waist, and a gentle kiss on his throat right over one of the darker marks already there, and he shivers again and leans back into it.  This is still so new, he doesn’t understand how it also feels so comfortable.  Dangerous and comfortable, familiar and shocking, wanton and tender, he doesn’t understand how Hannibal can be so many things at once.  Can make _Will_ be so many things at once.

He doesn’t understand how it takes this little to draw such a soft, wanting sigh from his lips while he’s standing in Bedelia Du Maurier’s kitchen waiting to eat her leg – _her fucking leg_ – for dinner.

He tilts his head just so, baring his neck for the kiss, but keeps his eyes steadily on the sauce. Damn if he’ll let it burn. He’s proud of keeping his voice steady as he asks, “Is she waking up?  Shame to have her sleep through her own dinner.”

Hannibal’s warm breath raises goosebumps on his skin as he just grazes it with his teeth and then says, “Getting there.  She needs a few more minutes. Or she’s acting like she does.  It can be difficult to tell.  You can take that off the heat now.”

Will turns off the flame and moves the saucepan to another burner gladly before saying, “You don’t have to tell me.  You should have seen her Lydia Fell routine. She may have missed a calling as an actress.”

“Then I would have had to find another therapist, which would have been a shame.  And apparently, so would you.  Or is she still delirious?  She seems to think you two have been having sessions.”  

Hannibal’s voice is heavy with amusement and Will is pretty sure he’s just gone beet-red.  He doesn’t realize he’s said _Oh, fuck_ out loud until he hears it, and then he turns and ducks his head to hide his face against Hannibal’s shirt just so he doesn’t have to make eye contact.  And just because he _can,_ now.  He threw his life away and he got this in return and so far it’s been a more than fair exchange.

Except that he failed to anticipate that Bedelia might use information from their ‘sessions’ to distract from Hannibal’s plans for her.  He hadn’t thought she’d have a chance to do that.  He hadn’t initially realized Hannibal that intended to drag it out like this, a limb at a time or whatever it is he’s got planned.

“Will?”  Hannibal doesn’t exactly force Will out of his hiding place, but he does tug at him just a little, encouraging him to look up. Which Will declines to do.  “What is it?”

“Shit.  I just…she… _fuck._ We talked about you, kind of a lot.  I have an awful feeling she’s about to spend this dinner throwing it in my face.”

“We could always gag her.  Or remove her tongue.  I'd hoped to let her share tonight's meal, but if it would make you more comfortable…”

“ _Jesus fuck what is wrong with you?"_ Will grips the shirt harder but does manage to straighten up and actually look Hannibal in the face, and he tries not to smile, he really doesn’t want to smile, but…apparently this is another one of the things Hannibal makes him into.  “No. I just…god damn it.  I wanted to have this conversation… I don’t know.  Some other way.”  He waves a hand vaguely around the too-hot, too-messy kitchen.

“What conversation are we having? I feel as if I’m missing a piece of information to hold up my end of it.”

Will groans and he’s not sure if it’s because of what he’s about to say, or the casual slide of Hannibal’s hand down to his hip, one thumb just pressing against that place near his hipbone that the bastard has already figured out makes Will squirm.  They’ve barely been doing this for two weeks, it’s unfair that Hannibal’s figured out how to drive thoughts from his mind already with so little effort, but Will can’t let himself get distracted onto that topic.

“I may have told her…well, not told her, exactly, but implied…”  He closes his eyes against the urge to run away, gathers his thoughts, and starts again.  “At one of our last sessions, I asked her if you loved me.”

With his eyes closed he can’t see Hannibal’s response but he can feel it, a tensing of the muscles under his hands and the fingers at his hip.  “What did she tell you?”  Hannibal’s voice has gone quiet, as if he doesn’t want Bedelia overhearing this particular conversation.  Which is just fine with Will.

“She didn’t tell me in so many words, but she made it fairly obvious to me that I was being an idiot not to already know.  She asked me if I loved you.  Again, not in so many words.”  

Will forces his eyes open, forces them up from where they would really like to stare at his fingers twisted in Hannibal’s shirt, and meets a question in Hannibal’s eyes that the man can’t even bear to put to words.  For once, he’s knocked Hannibal silent, and he could almost exult in it except that he senses a pain there and he’s tripping over his own words in a hurry to assuage it.

“I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t want her to ask.  I didn’t want to tell anyone but you.”  He doesn’t know a laugh is going to bubble out of him until it does, a bright, disbelieving thing.  “And now I want to tell _everyone._  Which is a problem since we’re supposed to be dead. I still want them to know I love you.”

He waits for the words to sink in and wash away that hint of questioning and pain. He forgets about the too-warm air and the sink full of soapy dishes and the drugged-up one-legged woman in the next room and pretty much everything that’s not the way Hannibal’s looking at him when he breathes “ _Will,_ ” with so little air behind it that he’s mostly just mouthing the word.  Like Will’s just sucker-punched him.

Suddenly Will doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.  He’s said the words once and now he wants to say them a thousand times.  He wants them to be the first thing he says in the morning and the last thing he says at night.  He says them again just to taste them in his mouth.  “ _I love you._  God. I should have said that before. I didn’t know how to, but I didn’t want you to hear it from her first.”

He opens his mouth again to say _tell me you love me too_ but he doesn’t get a chance, he’s suddenly being twisted to the side so that when Hannibal steps into him Will’s back hits the counter and not the hot stove.  But that’s all the mercy he gets before Hannibal’s kissing him weak in the knees, hard and demanding everything Will has to give.  He’s not sure how much he has to give yet - he suspects they’ll be figuring that out together for a while to come - but he tries, he tries so hard to meet everything Hannibal asks of him, until he absolutely has to break for air.

And then –

“We’re leaving.”

Will blinks at Hannibal as he steps back and makes the pronouncement. Will feels like he’s missed a step somewhere.  “I – what?”

“We’re leaving right now. Is there anything you need to take with you?”

“But… Bedelia?”

“Bedelia will eventually come around enough to crawl to a phone and call for medical assistance.  Or she can sit there and eat her leg, or try to sew it on again, for all I care.  Say it again.”

Will blinks again, taking a moment to follow the conversational shift, and then does as asked with another smile he couldn’t repress if he wanted to.  It gets easier to say the more he says it: “I love you, you maniac.  Are we really just leaving her out there?  At the dinner table in her fancy dress?  After all that cooking?”

“We are leaving her there  We are driving as long as either of us can stay awake, until we are safely away from here.  We will find a hotel, we will sleep, I will spend several hours trying again to get you to make that amazing sound you made the other night, and then we will figure out where to go next. Anywhere you want.  Anything you want.  Do you know why?”

His voice is almost a purr now, heated and velvety enough that Will could almost wrap himself in it for warmth, and he shivers again and smiles big and bright. “Because you love me.”

“Because I love you.”  Hannibal pronounces the words clearly and with great solemnity.

It sounds like a promise.  It sounds like a future.

* * * *

In the other room, Bedelia Du Maurier sits as calmly as she can, waiting for the last of the fog to clear.  She clutches the oyster fork she’s hidden in her lap, and she watches blearily as her leg steams and then grows cold on the table in front of her, and at some point she realizes that all sounds of conversation and clattering from the kitchen have stopped.

She calls out and doesn’t get a response.  She counts to five hundred.  She pulls herself up, swaying, off-balance for a variety of reasons, and slowly drags herself with the help of her chair to her phone.  She calls 911.  She falls back into the chair and waits for the sound of sirens, shivering in the draft where they must have left the door open when they left.

She’ll spend the rest of her life wondering why they left, and whether they’ll come back. But the recipe cards stop arriving on her birthdays and eventually Bedelia chooses to believe that’s a tacit acknowledgement that whatever Will and Hannibal are doing, she no longer figures into their plans.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic brought to you by [your friends at damnslippyplanet enterprises](http://damnslippyplanet.tumblr.com) as always. (By which I mean me. "Your friends" is literally me and maybe my cats if they walked on the keyboard.) Come hang out and scream with me on Tumblr if you want.


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